Remembering the Longest Night of August

I got the job at the 24-hour diner about 2 months back, and I wondered how long it would be before I’d hear from her again.

Sure enough, sweatin’ around on the cook’s line during the mad circus of a dinner rush, I felt that familiar but rare vibration of someone sending me a text.

When things died down a bit, I got a chance to glance and didn’t recognize the number but there it was…

“I don’t know how the last 4 months have been for you, but for the most part they’ve been hell for me…”

I turned my phone off without reading the rest at that exact moment, but I knew from context exactly who it was from, and I knew her well enough to surmise what the rest of it was getting at.

Joanna didn’t necessarily miss me but missed having someone who would listen patiently.

I waited to respond until I got home.

Home, in those days, was a rather well-kept little house with 4 strangers living each in their own rented room. The other guy kept well-enough to himself and stayed pretty constantly on his gaming system in his room. The one girl’s relatives owned the house and she was who the rest of us dealt with in getting settled into the situation there and who we paid rent to. Hanna stayed in the basement when she was actually home other than making a meal or two in the kitchen throughout her days off. About a week back, she had asked me for help hanging some art on her walls that she had come across at the local flea market. She had a pretty laugh and was a beauty sight to behold for sure. As I was hanging the last painting, she steered the conversation to her recent break-up and how down she’d been recently. I listened and let her vent a bit, but didn’t take the bait on this one. I wasn’t looking for new ex-girlfriends and casual encounters weren’t generally my style.

But then there I was on that night, coming home late at night from the end of my shift and she was there in the kitchen fixing a snack and gave me a subtle smile as I came through the door.

“Hey.”

“How’s it going?”

“Ya hungry?” she asked.

“I think I’m just gonna get some rest it’s been a long night.” I responded. “Thanks though.”

“Suit yourself,” she said with a grin as she twisted back towards the stove.

I dropped my jacket onto the chair in the corner of my room where I would often read articles deep enough into the night to hear birds waking outside my window.

I let myself fall into bed and stared at the ceiling for what felt like hours.

Joanna’s text had ended with a question, “Can we talk?”

I knew there wasn’t any use in not replying but I couldn’t figure on how much I would have to say or how long I would be down to endure her monologue.

I kicked my legs off the bed and rose to my feet. Slipped out to the back porch and wrote a poem about the possums that wandered by noisily as if they were a bickering old pair of lovers displeased with each other over some small remark or another earlier in the day. Then, I dug my phone out of my pocket and texted simply, “Yes.”

The phone rang almost instantly.

She had been crying by the sound of things and would begin right in on the mess of a night she had experienced.

She told me she had visited her ex from before she met me to try and find some closure and instead ended up punching him square in the face and driving off.

“Where are you right now?” she abruptly inserted into the flow of words.

“I’m at the house where I stay these days up in the hills.”

“Would you maybe wanna meet me somewhere to talk some more. I just really don’t want to feel so alone right now.”

Seemed like one of those situations where life garnishes your plate with a choice – two roads to choose from. Staying home and wrapping up the phone call was an option, but I knew I wouldn’t feel great about it come morning.

“Where do you wanna meet?”

I met her at a park that didn’t have posted hours and we hugged for several minutes while she slipped in and out of nearly-silent sobbing on my shoulder. We ended up leaving her Jeep there to go on a drive through the backroads while we talked.

I dropped her back off at her Jeep and we agreed to talk more soon.

To this very day, we often remind each other of that long hug and even longer drive as we make coffee in the kitchen together or while we’re cleaning up after dinner or between sips of wine on the porch…I still love her madly like the first time we kissed, even now about a decade after the fact.

The thought that I might have declined to meet up with her and played the cold-hearted character, I knew myself capable of being in them days, seems silly when I see her face on the pillow next to me in the morning.

Truth is, I knew it from the start that I would always love Joanna and that she would, in her own way, love me to the very end of my days.